


Normal Day

by treefrogie84



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 13:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9608645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84
Summary: Cas doesn’t think about it too hard when there’s a stranger in his usual seat on the bus. It’s late July and all the college kids are moving back to town, some changeover can be expected in his morning commute. But he’s also uncaffeinated, so it’s not worth fussing over. Cas claims a seat closer to the back, plugs his headphones in, and goes back to ignoring his fellow passengers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was "Today is like any normal day. Except you keep seeing the same stranger at random times and every where you see them, little things begin to change." Somehow that turned into this.

Cas doesn’t think about it too hard when there’s a stranger in his usual seat on the bus. It’s late July and all the college kids are moving back to town, some changeover can be expected in his morning commute. But he’s also uncaffeinated, so it’s not worth fussing over. Cas claims a seat closer to the back, plugs his headphones in, and goes back to ignoring his fellow passengers. 

Or he tries to. The stranger stares at him the entire ride from his apartment complex to campus. It would feel creepy if Cas wasn’t also contending with a hangover washing over him as the bus moves. Briefly, he wonders if he’s coming down sick, a single beer with a burger and fries shouldn’t give him a hangover, and even if it did… He woke up this morning feeling fine. But then, his hand is aching, throbbing in time with the pounding in his head. Maybe he had more to drink than he remembers, or finally accepted his downstairs neighbor’s invitation to come relax. 

There’s a flash when the bus pulls up to his stop, sunlight glinting off of a windshield, that briefly dazzles him. The fabric on the seat where the stranger sat is different when he glances at it, trying to get his eyes to refocus, wood instead of garish blue. But then it looks normal after his eyes flick away for a moment.

He thinks about it as he stands in line at the campus coffee shop before deciding that he must have seen it wrong. It must have been a trick of the light stabbing into an ill prepared set of eyes. Cas didn’t even see the stranger get off the bus to leave the seat empty. At least he’s feeling better now that he’s off the bus, less like he’s going to spend the day curled around a trash can at his desk. 

They’ve crammed all five of the Art History and Archeology department’s grad students in a single giant room on the top floor of the building. It’s unbelievably hot in the room, but by this point in the summer, Cas has figured out the best way for him to be productive: into the office as early as possible to work on his own research and writing, then a break for lunch and the summer session class he’s TA’ing for, and he ends his day hiding in the cool stacks of the library’s basement either grading papers for summer session or working again on his stuff. 

Or at least, that’s how his days normally go. Today, nothing goes as planned. 

Cas glances out the staircase window on his way up to the office, catches another glint of sunlight and movement across the quad. He _knows_ it’s the stranger from the bus, but he has no idea how he knows that. Just a dead certainty. The headache and nausea slam back into him, dropping him to his knees. He blinks and the floor he could have sworn was worn linoleum is suddenly dull and scratched wood. 

Cas tightens his hands, fingertips dragging against exposed and splintered wood. He watches as blood wells up around a splinter that’s dug into the heel of his hand. The pain hasn’t hit him yet, but he’s guessing it will soon. 

Grabbing his bag, he carefully climbs back down the narrow stair case. He’s seeing or imagining things, or maybe he’s having a stroke. In any case, he should probably stay out of the heat today. Much better to stay in the coffee shop, surrounded by people, just in case.

His hand won’t stop bleeding. He hadn’t even been able to find the splinter in all the blood to pull it out. Cas wraps yet another napkin around it, adding the used one to the growing trash in front of him. Frowning at the bloody pile, he looks up just in time to see the stranger from the bus this morning drop into the chair across from him. 

“Cas, you gotta listen to me.”

Closer, there’s something familiar about the face across from him, green eyes staring at him from beneath sun-bleached hair. Cas knows this face, but distantly, like someone he went to elementary school with. “How do you know my name?”

“What? Cas, it’s me. Dean.” Green eyes flicker over him, landing on his napkin wrapped hand. “Let me see your hand, Cas.”

“I don’t even _know_ you. No.” 

Dean shifts in his chair, leaning forward, elbows on the table. The air kinda sparks around him, the chair he’s sitting in flickering from wood to metal and back. “Cas, it’s me. You’ve gotta have noticed that something isn’t right with this.”

“What I’ve noticed is that looking at you gives me a headache and I don’t know why. You’ve been stalking me for some reason, and things aren’t right when you’re around.” He pushes his uninjured hand through his hair before flipping his laptop shut. “On the other hand, you’re cute, I feel like crap, and I don’t want to work today, so I’ll give you a chance. Why?”

Dean looks taken aback, “You think I’m cute, but…” Cutting himself off, he snags Cas’s coffee and takes a drink. “Whatever. Just trust me, man. Let me see your hand.”

Cautiously, Cas loosens the napkin around his hand before extending it across the table. There is zero reason to trust this guy, regardless of how familiar he seems, but he does. Trusts him enough to let him fuss over an injury at any rate. Because this also feels familiar, like they’ve done this dance before. 

Dean glances up, a sudden grin, before focusing back on Cas’s palm. The moment he touches Cas, the sparkles around him intensify and so does Cas’s headache. Dean holds on to his hand, gripping it tightly. “I don’t know what you’re seeing, Cas, but ignore it. You gotta ignore it for just a little longer.” 

Cas slams his eyes shut as the flashing starts to overwhelm him, “Dean, I… whatever you’re doing, it’s making it worse.”

He feels Dean lean to the side, do something with his free hand, before shifting his grip on Cas’s hand. “Hold on. This is going to hurt.” A pause, and whispered, so quiet Cas isn’t sure he heard it correctly, “I’m sorry.”

Fire. His hand is on fire and why the fuck did he ever trust a stranger and it hurts and he can’t even open his eyes, it hurts so bad…

Slowly, the pain recedes and with it, the headache. Cas isn’t certain what exactly has happened, but he feels better now than he has all day.

Gingerly, he opens his eyes, meeting Dean’s concerned face from across the table in… the bunker’s kitchen. He’s in the kitchen, not a campus coffee shop. What? “Dean, what is going on?”

Dean looks sheepish, “You, uh, got a splinter off of one of the boxes in storage. I’m not sure what you were seeing, but you were definitely seeing something that’s not here.” He reaches over to the counter, grabs a spare towel and sets to wiping away the remaining blood. There’s a pair of tweezers, some paper towels, and a flask of holy water set to the side. “Nothing I did was making an impact. So…”

Cas looks at his hand, still damp with holy water and inflamed, “So you played along, yanked it out, and doused me with holy water?”

Dean shrugs, “If it can make you hallucinate, probably should use holy water to clear any infection anyway.” He stands, pushing away from the table. “Stay here, I’ll be right back with the first aid kit.”

Cas nods, staring blankly at the table between them. Did he really…

He’s still staring when Dean returns. 

“Cas, you with me?” 

Cas shakes himself back to awareness, “Yes. Apologies. I was…” He trails off.

“No worries, man.” Dean sits next to him this time, carefully pulling the injured hand towards him. “These kind of things always fuck me up for a day or so. You’ve been out for less than twenty minutes.”

Shaken, Cas watches Dean work, checking carefully to make sure no parts of the splinter remain before applying neosporin and bandaging it. “For the record, Cas, I think you’re cute too.”

Cas brings his head up so quickly, he nearly slams his forehead into Dean’s jaw. “What? I… Crap, you heard that?”

Dean grins at him, chuckling. “Yeah.” Leaning forward, he softly kisses Cas’s cheek. “How about we get this put away and then go out for real coffee? You can tell me all about how you want me to pick you up at a coffee shop or on the bus.”

Cas can feel his face burning, but he nods anyway. “You can tell me about how you want to pick up an art history grad student.”

Dean’s laughter carries throughout the bunker.


End file.
